I stumbled across a picture of a rainbow cake last week and just had to make myself one. There are plenty of variations online, but I chose to make a layer cake with a simple vanilla recipe.

Vanilla Cake

* 2 cups of sugar

* 4 eggs

* 2 1/2 cups flour

* 1 cup milk

* 3/4 cups vegetable oil

* 2 1/2 tsp baking powder

* 1 tsp vanilla

* red, yellow & blue food colouring

Beat together the eggs and sugar until fluffy. Add all other ingrediants except oil and colouring. Mix until combined then fold in the oil taking care not to over mix. Split batter into smaller containers, one for each colour. I made 6 colours as indigo and blue were too similar for my food colourings. If you have better colours than me then you could make a traditional 7 colour rainbow. Add colours to each container and mix gentley. Bake each colour in a seperate 7 inch (17 cm) cake tin @ 180°C for 12 – 15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

Assemble in order with something between the layers. You could use wipped cream, frosting or jam. I used Barker’s Black Doris Plum jam.

White Chocolate Frosting

* 1 cup white chocolate buttons

* 25g butter

* 1/4 cup cream

* icing sugar to mix – approx 1 1/2 cups

In a double boiler or metal bowl over a boiling saucepan, melt the white chocolate & butter. The mix may look like it has split but keep going, white chocolate is fiddly. Add cream and start adding icing sugar slowly until you get a consistancy you are happy with. Allow to cool slightly and beat well. Pour onto cake and spread with a pallet knife.

Initially inspired by a friends Lilac blog, I have to confess to being a reformed purple lover. Traumatized in my youth by meeting people who thought tie-dyed purple Jim Beam t-shirts and purple & black crushed velvet dresses were the height of fashion. It was only upon seeing a friends gorgeous deep purple flannelet sheets teamed with a crisp white duvet cover and lilac pillow cases that I re-found my love of purple.